Getting higher education is an expensive endeavor. In most of the cases, you are required to finance your higher education. That is, you are required to take out student or educational loans in order to pay for the educational expenses. Now, many people even face problems in paying off the debts later. In such cases, it is not only the private lenders but the federally insured lenders to who hand over debt collection matters to the collection agencies
Handling the collection agencies
It has always been a common tactics of the creditors and lenders of any unsecured loans to hand over the debt to the collection agency. Currently, the Department of Education too contracts different collection agencies in order to get back dues on the student loan accounts. However, if only a student is unable to establish or adhere to the repayment plans, these accounts can be subject to assignments of collection agencies especially by the Department’s Debt Collection Service. Those accounts assigned to a collection agency are assessed additional collection costs.
However, one thing that you should be aware of is that the collection agency employees have been trained especially to comply with terms of FDCPA or Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. This Act governs the practices of the collection agencies.
So, in order to avoid the harassments of the collection agencies, you will have to be aware of the whole of the FDCPA and the prohibitions outlined by this Act. In addition to this, another thing that you will have to remember is that while you will start getting the collection calls, you should better take the calls rather than avoiding them. Otherwise, the matter gets increasingly complex. It is always better to take the calls and if required get the debt validated if you have doubts regarding the same.
FDCPA and the collection agencies
According to the Fair Debt Collections Practice Act the collection agencies cannot:
1. Use abusive language over the phone – The collection agencies cannot use abusive language over the phone in order to collect the unpaid debt.
2. Call you at your work place – The collection agencies aren’t supposed to call you at your work place if the office policy prohibits it. Moreover, the agent cannot even talk to your employer reading the debt and disclose the fact.
3. Call before 8 am or 9 pm – The collection agencies aren’t supposed to call you before 8 am in the morning and 9 pm at night. They can only call in between this time limit in order to collect a debt.
4. Disclose details of your debt – The collection agency is not supposed to disclose the details or the facts and figures of your debt to others. They cannot disclose the details to your neighbors or nay other family members, friends and relatives.
5. Request post dated checks – The collection agency cannot ask you to provide them any post dated checks in order to use it for wrong purposes. The FTC prohibits them from doing this.
6. Use fake identity – It has been seen that in most the cases the collection agency uses fake identity to get information of the debtor. However, the FDCPA prohibits the collection agencies from using fake identities to collect personal information of the debtor.
So, you can see that there are various things that the collection agencies aren’t supposed to do. If they fail to stick to the terms or abide by these rules, you can file complaints with the FTC or the Federal Trade Commission or the State’s Attorney General.